NASA’s Curiosity rover has cracked open a Mars rock that contained several elements necessary to life as we know it. The presence of the elements, including hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, suggest that the planet may once have played host to a habitable environment, according to a news release and NASA press conference held on Tuesday.

The data was obtained from a sample collected and analyzed by the rover in a location on Mars called Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater. The area was home to an “ancient river system or intermittently wet lake bed.” The site was only a few hundred yards away from where the rover collected samples of smectite, or clays that form in the presence of water, back in September 2012.

The full list of relevant elements were sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon. Scientists noted that a mixture of oxidized, less-oxidized, and non-oxidized chemicals were present in the sample, and some of these could be favorable energy sources for some of the microbes that live on Earth. Researchers first noted the samples' distinct characteristics when they cut into the soil and found the interior to be gray, rather than Mars’ characteristic red.

John Grotzinger, a project scientist at the Mars Science Lab at the California Institute of Technology, noted at the press conference that this finding marks the transition from the search for water on Mars to the search for habitable (or formerly habitable) environments.

Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is the former Culture Editor at Ars Technica, and now does the occasional freelance story. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Applied Physics. Twitter@caseyjohnston

The full list of relevant elements were sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and carbon. Scientists noted that a mixture of oxidized, less-oxidized, and non-oxidized chemicals were present in the sample, and some of these could be favorable energy sources for some of the microbes that live on Earth.

All the more reason to keep one's rovers clean before shipping them out to Mars.

I know it has the ability to detect organic compounds. . But as far as finding life as we know it, we would need to send a rover with the tools for doing just that. However, I doubt it would ever get any funding. :-(

If we did find life on mars, it would mess up a whole lot of peoples world view..

But this is fantastic, hopefully we could find some organic compounds/fossils, that'd be awesome.

The SAM instrument can detect organic molecules that could indicate metabolic processes have occurred.

Keep in mind that when John Grotzinger said this was evidence of a habitable environment, he was talking about billions of years ago when water was present and these clays formed. So whatever evidence of life we may find, it is most likely going to be ancient life. A major difficulty in evaluating this would be that first, organic molecules generated from metabolic processes may have been broken down over time by radiation and chemistry within the rocks, and second that various organic molecules can be generated by non-biologic sources.

However, simply knowing that Curiosity landed on a site that shows (ancient) habitability is extremely exciting.

But as far as finding life as we know it, we would need to send a rover with the tools for doing just that. However, I doubt it would ever get any funding. :-( If we did find life on mars, it would mess up a whole lot of peoples world view..

I'm not sure what to make of this. Are you implying that the reason MER and MSL were funded is because the (presumably religious) people who would oppose the discovery of life on Mars for world-view-related reasons were versed enough in the details of the science of these missions to understand that a definitive "life on Mars!" ruling was impossible, and therefore said "okay"? How did they know the first scoop of dirt put into SAM wouldn't have been chock-full of organics that could only have been of biological origin?

Of course that's unlikely, but finding a microbial fossil (or a living microbe) is vastly more so, if they were willing to go by the "odds".

Personally I don't think that has anything to do with it. The whole Mars exploration initiative is based around finding the answer to the question of whether there was ever life on Mars. Any of the current or previous missions there could have found life of sufficient obviousness, except that as far as we can tell Mars is currently a dead planet. So instead of sending rovers with high-powered microscopes sufficient to see microbes that won't be there, we send rovers to find out if Mars could have ever supported life, and if so where.

Eventually we may detect sufficient evidence that life may have once existed at a particular site that we want to follow up with a mission with could identify a microbial fossil. I don't see that mission being stopped by the fundies (or whoever) any more than the current missions have been.

If we did find life on mars, it would mess up a whole lot of peoples world view.

This makes about as much sense as the idea that marijuana is illegal because the government can't tax it.

It makes perfect sense. If God made life on mars, why isn't it talked about in Genesis? Islam would be shaken to it's core as well. The majority of religions that have a creation story would have to have some serious overhaul. Although I understand the last Pope said it isn't against their religion for aliens to exist, but how they manage to explain this is beyond me.

I wasn't attempting to imply anything of the sort. Just stating a fact. The reason it won't get funding is because it's such a low priority for the USA. The whole "we just sent a rover to mars" and not having a budget is going to kill any hopes of such a mission anytime soon.That being said, I can see the christian right saying "Don't support the search for life, there is none."

Well, NASA does have a 2020 rover mission planned -- the success of Curiosity actually just increases their odds of getting another mission funded (just like MSL would never have happened without the smashing success of MER). Of course anything could happen, and there are lots of reasons to suspect it may not end up funded.

It sounded like you were saying fundamentalist objection to the search for life on other worlds was one of those reasons, and with that I disagree based on their demonstrable lack of impact on past and present searches for life.

Doubtful. Mars lacks a magnetosphere. Any atmosphere we tried to establish on the planet would be promptly stripped away by the solar winds.

Not necessarily promptly. If we could produce an atmosphere on timescales relevant to us (a few hundred years or less), it would remain there for much longer. Maybe we'd have to keep topping it up every couple hundred thousand years or so. :-)

If we did find life on mars, it would mess up a whole lot of peoples world view.

This makes about as much sense as the idea that marijuana is illegal because the government can't tax it.

It makes perfect sense. If God made life on mars, why isn't it talked about in Genesis? Islam would be shaken to it's core as well. The majority of religions that have a creation story would have to have some serious overhaul. Although I understand the last Pope said it isn't against their religion for aliens to exist, but how they manage to explain this is beyond me.

I'm not religious but I don't see any real contradiction between Genesis (if you don't interpret it literally) and life on Mars.

That being said, I can see the christian right saying "Don't support the search for life, there is none."

MistaWondaBread wrote:

t makes perfect sense. If God made life on mars, why isn't it talked about in Genesis? Islam would be shaken to it's core as well. The majority of religions that have a creation story would have to have some serious overhaul. Although I understand the last Pope said it isn't against their religion for aliens to exist, but how they manage to explain this is beyond me.

I can see people suggesting that it's a waste of money, and there are people in every group that have some whacked out view, but there's nothing about mainstream Christianity that would be impacted by the existence of life on other planets.

If we did find life on mars, it would mess up a whole lot of peoples world view.

This makes about as much sense as the idea that marijuana is illegal because the government can't tax it.

It makes perfect sense. If God made life on mars, why isn't it talked about in Genesis? Islam would be shaken to it's core as well. The majority of religions that have a creation story would have to have some serious overhaul. Although I understand the last Pope said it isn't against their religion for aliens to exist, but how they manage to explain this is beyond me.

Not it doesn't. Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. " I would consider Mars part of the heavens from the perspective of Earth. Religions would accommodate. Religion has survived the scientific explanations for how the Earth was created it will survive some frozen microbes.

If we did find life on mars, it would mess up a whole lot of peoples world view.

This makes about as much sense as the idea that marijuana is illegal because the government can't tax it.

It makes perfect sense. If God made life on mars, why isn't it talked about in Genesis? Islam would be shaken to it's core as well. The majority of religions that have a creation story would have to have some serious overhaul. Although I understand the last Pope said it isn't against their religion for aliens to exist, but how they manage to explain this is beyond me.

All Aliens are Heretics to be Burned at the Stake ! Ha ! Our fancy pants De-Materializer will take care of that real quick said the little green man.

If we did find life on mars, it would mess up a whole lot of peoples world view.

This makes about as much sense as the idea that marijuana is illegal because the government can't tax it.

It makes perfect sense. If God made life on mars, why isn't it talked about in Genesis? Islam would be shaken to it's core as well. The majority of religions that have a creation story would have to have some serious overhaul. Although I understand the last Pope said it isn't against their religion for aliens to exist, but how they manage to explain this is beyond me.

I think the burden is on you to demonstrate how alien life would invalidate Christianity or the Bible. Genesis is the Biblical account of creation, but it's not as if there as some aside in it that says anything like "and no life was created anywhere besides Earth."

C.S. Lewis, a prominent Christian author, wrote a whole Sci-Fi trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength) imagining that Maleldil (God) had also created life on Mars and Venus.

I know plently of Christian Sci-Fi/Fantasy nerds. This idea that there is some super-elite group of well-connected Christians preventing funding to any research that might discover alien life is frankly comical.

I'm not religious but I don't see any real contradiction between Genesis (if you don't interpret it literally) and life on Mars.

Well, see, it's that "interpret it literally" part that is the sticker. Personally, I am religious, and I see the Bible as a spiritual guidebook, not a biology/geology/cosmology textbook. So of course I see no conflict between science and Christianity.

However there are fundamentalists who do take it extremely literally (which is not to say they would have the same literal interpretation you might). And many of them absolutely would find the notion of life on Mars contradictory to the Word of God and ergo impossible. I mean, these are the same people who feel that pi = 3 because the Bible described a round table that was 1 cubit across and 3 cubits around.

Make no mistake, there are people who really think this way.

I just see no signs that they influence the budget or mission guidelines of NASA in any meaningful way.

Doubtful. Mars lacks a magnetosphere. Any atmosphere we tried to establish on the planet would be promptly stripped away by the solar winds.

I did a bit of googling and it seems people disagree whether a magnetosphere is needed or not. Venus has none, and it's atmosphere is thick. Sometimes (thousands of years apart) earth's magnetosphere collapses for a short time, and it doesn't seem to cause any problems.

Basically the issue with terraforming mars is it's too cold. You need to warm up the atmosphere (perhaps by adding greenhouse gasses) and then things that are currently solid on the surface will melt/become gas, perhaps allowing it to support some of the plant life that thrives in antarctica, which would convert some of the the (abundant) CO-2 to oxygen, as well as other effects which might lead to a gradual warming which would allow for more life plant life, rince/repeat and eventually the planet probably could become warm enough and stable enough for to support the kind of life we have on earth.

Of course, we could send humans there now. It's already far more habitable than the international space station... the only issue is the very long travel t ime.

I think it's a good idea to attempt it. I'm generally not a big fan of having our entire race living on one planet, which might be hit by an asteroid any day.

Hence the need to terraform? It's widely believed that creating an atmosphere would enable greenhouse gasses to warm the planet surface, over a long period of time that is. Terraforming would not be a quick process, with some projecting up to or more than 1,000 years.

Doubtful. Mars lacks a magnetosphere. Any atmosphere we tried to establish on the planet would be promptly stripped away by the solar winds.

Not necessarily promptly. If we could produce an atmosphere on timescales relevant to us (a few hundred years or less), it would remain there for much longer. Maybe we'd have to keep topping it up every couple hundred thousand years or so. :-)

Doesn't it also mean that we'd need some serious radiation shielding, though? I thought the magnetosphere blocked most of the ionizing radiation coming from the sun.

Hence the need to terraform? It's widely believed that creating an atmosphere would enable greenhouse gasses to warm the planet surface, over a long period of time that is. Terraforming would not be a quick process, with some projecting up to or more than 1,000 years.

Basically, we need an efficient way to transport our excess GHG's to Mars

Hence the need to terraform? It's widely believed that creating an atmosphere would enable greenhouse gasses to warm the planet surface, over a long period of time that is. Terraforming would not be a quick process, with some projecting up to or more than 1,000 years.

The better question, in my opinion, is what happened to all of this water and stuff on Mars?

What catastrophe caused Mars to be as it is? And how is this catastrophe related to the Earth's history?

We know Mars has a massive impact crater, if mars' rotation or orbit was different, it would affect Earth as well in some way. What is this history? This is a vastly intriguing question, IMO.

Hence the need to terraform? It's widely believed that creating an atmosphere would enable greenhouse gasses to warm the planet surface, over a long period of time that is. Terraforming would not be a quick process, with some projecting up to or more than 1,000 years.

There isn't nor will there ever be enough energy for what you're suggesting. Don't take Total Recall as a reliable source of information about Mars.

And if we had that much energy, we could live quite well on good old Earth.

News like this makes me cringe that I was born 100 years (or so) too early. I can only imagine the things we'll find, outposts we'll build, and voyages we'll launch a hundred years from now.

I think this too, but then I think "who's to say I'm not living in the golden age of humanity, and our quality of life is all downhill from here?" I'm not generally that pessimistic, but it helps to remind me to enjoy the time I live in now, since who knows what the future actually holds.

Besides, if we're around to see the first men touch down on Mars, well I think that would be a swell time to be witness to.

The rock is made up of a fine-grained mudstone containing clay minerals, sulfate minerals and other chemicals. ... "Clay minerals make up at least 20 percent of the composition of this sample," said David Blake, ...

The presence of calcium sulfate along with the clay suggests the soil is neutral or mildly alkaline. ... Scientists were surprised to find a mixture of oxidized, less-oxidized, and even non-oxidized chemicals, providing an energy gradient of the sort many microbes on Earth exploit to live. "

Ah, the necessary CHNOPS suite (Carbon, Hydrogen, et cetera) that is the major constituents of cells!

But no certified organics ("other chemicals") as of yet, even if the stream bedding suggests an excellent sediment trap, hopefully because they are still looking at element analysis.

The upshot is that a) the then environment was perfectly habitable, b) the now environment can preserve organics (not fully oxidized) and is _still_ perfectly habitable as regards CHNOPS and energy (just add water).

Other news today is that scientists have found that bacteria that live in extremely dry conditions (say, saline) has a chemical trick to retain water. Charges such as in some proteins keep the highly polarizable water from vaporizing. Auspicious press releases.

The better question, in my opinion, is what happened to all of this water and stuff on Mars?

Probably evaporated and/or frozen solid.

omniron wrote:

What catastrophe caused Mars to be as it is? And how is this catastrophe related to the Earth's history?

Probably not one catastrophe, probably a gradual change over hundreds of millions of years.

omniron wrote:

We know Mars has a massive impact crater, if mars' rotation or orbit was different, it would affect Earth as well in some way. What is this history? This is a vastly intriguing question, IMO.

Meteors that burn up/evaporate on approach to earth and never touch the surface (or are really small when they do) will instead hit mars with their full force, because it has a very small/thin atmosphere. That's why mars and the moon are full of craters, and earth has almost none.

Hence the need to terraform? It's widely believed that creating an atmosphere would enable greenhouse gasses to warm the planet surface, over a long period of time that is. Terraforming would not be a quick process, with some projecting up to or more than 1,000 years.

There isn't nor will there ever be enough energy for what you're suggesting. Don't take Total Recall as a reliable source of information about Mars.

And if we had that much energy, we could live quite well on good old Earth.

I never claimed it would be easy, and I did say it would take a long time. But with time comes results, and it wouldn't take near as much energy to let the cycle happen like a slow burner. And if we're terraforming 200 years from now, who knows how much actual energy output that is in the face of technological advancements.

Doesn't it also mean that we'd need some serious radiation shielding, though? I thought the magnetosphere blocked most of the ionizing radiation coming from the sun.

There's not much evidence that radiation is actually harmful. It's an unknown... we avoid it, but don't really know for sure how necessary it is.

Some radiation is definitely harmful, most radiation is completely harmless (we are exposed to it constantly on earth), and a lot of radiation has unknown effects (it's probably harmless too, but who wants to risk it?).

Doubtful. Mars lacks a magnetosphere. Any atmosphere we tried to establish on the planet would be promptly stripped away by the solar winds.

Not necessarily promptly. If we could produce an atmosphere on timescales relevant to us (a few hundred years or less), it would remain there for much longer. Maybe we'd have to keep topping it up every couple hundred thousand years or so. :-)

Doesn't it also mean that we'd need some serious radiation shielding, though? I thought the magnetosphere blocked most of the ionizing radiation coming from the sun.

You would want shielding, yes, but underground or adobe-style construction ought to be sufficient.

I never claimed it would be easy, and I did say it would take a long time. But with time comes results, and it wouldn't take near as much energy to let the cycle happen like a slow burner. And if we're terraforming 200 years from now, who knows how much actual energy output that is in the face of technological advancements.

From the Wikipedia page:"This article appears to contain unverifiable speculation and unjustified claims. Information must be verifiable and based on reliable published sources. Please remove unverified speculation from the article."

I stopped reading the NASA document the second I read the name Carl Sagan.

There isn't nor will there ever be enough energy for what you're suggesting. Don't take Total Recall as a reliable source of information about Mars.

And if we had that much energy, we could live quite well on good old Earth.

?! We have the sun as an almost unlimited source of energy and we are living "quite well on good old Earth".

Sure, we would have to stop using rockets to get out of earth's gravitational field. But there are other ways to achieve it. We could build a space elevator (~50,000km long cable extending away from earth, attached to the ground by gravity, pulled away from the ground by centrifugal force, and kept tight/hard enough to haul cargo by those two combined). Or we could use something similar to a hot air balloon.

Once you get far enough away from earth, travel through space doesn't need much energy at all - especially if you're not fussed about getting somewhere quickly (that would be fine for cargo ships, which wouldn't have any crew). Starting on the earth already gives you massive speed because earth is spinning at a rate of 365 degrees per day, so you just push yourself out a bit with thrusters until you start "falling" away towards your destination. You can use the gravitational field of other planets to make major changes to your course (including 180 degree turns, or stopping altogether) and solar or nuclear powered thrusters to make minor changes.